Is the Muslim Brotherhood on the verge of losing out in Egypt?

posted at 12:41 pm on August 26, 2013 by Bruce McQuain

Fox has an interesting report about the mood in Egypt. It appears the Muslim Brotherhood has lost the sympathy of many key constituencies in Egypt because of the movement’s violent actions.

As their nation descends into violent chaos, Egyptians are increasingly blaming the Muslim Brotherhood, despite attempts by the Islamist group to scapegoat Christians and the military, according to several sources who spoke to FoxNews.com from Cairo.

“The Muslim Brotherhood has lost all sympathy with their points due to their violence,” said a Long Island, N.Y., Egyptian-American, who is in a Cairo suburb for a family wedding.

In fact, many Egyptians seem to be both supportive and thankful that the military did what it did to remove the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi from office:

A Muslim woman named Nina told FoxNews.com most citizens – Christian and Muslim – are solidly behind the military, which has been criticized by the west for its decisive crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

“I am Muslim and I am against terrorism and I support the revolution [which ousted Morsi] and I support all the decisions of the Egyptian army forces,” she said. “We love Egypt so much and we hope the foreign countries stop misunderstanding about us and the situation now in Egypt.”

Of course the Brotherhood’s propaganda machine is in full gear and as mentioned, the West has not been particularly supportive of the military’s actions. However, it appears the Egyptian on the street may see the military’s action as the best way to return to some level of normalcy. It seems clear that the extremist path is not what the country as a whole feels comfortable embarking upon. It also appears the thin veneer of respectability the Brotherhood cultivated over the years (with a helping hand from numerous Western apologists) has worn thin and the real Brotherhood has become evident to most Egyptians now, to the point that the Brotherhood is not receiving the reception or the support they formerly received:

Even at mosques, the tide seems to be turning against the Muslim Brotherhood, according to one man who spoke from Cairo.

“They gather around mosques, from five to 100 of them, to show they are important and the goal is to go and cut off the roads and rally to get more supporters,” he said.

“Sometimes during Friday prayers, the sheikh wants to push people to support the Muslim Brotherhood, but modern Muslims are dominant and not deceived anymore with fake words that defending the Muslim Brotherhood is defending Islam,” he said.

One former jihadist and Salafist cleric who spoke to MidEast Christian News said the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to focus anger against the nation’s Christian minority, which did not support Morsi, but was hardly alone in that stance.

“The Brotherhood lost everything, politically and economically,” Osama el-Quossi told MCN. “They lost the citizens’ sympathy, so they used religion to gain support of ordinary people.”

The scapegoating of Coptic Christians in Egypt appears to be backfiring finally. The fact that the military has forcefully stepped in to stop the Brotherhood’s violence against the Christians has met with the approval of most Egyptians.

Yet Egyptians remain convinced that President Obama is backing the Mohamed Morsi. At a lunch at the Egyptian Ambassador’s residence on Thursday, Dr. Mohamed Abou El-Ghar, head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, bluntly warned a small gathering of journalists and policy wonks that he fears, “America is losing Egypt…There is a very strong perception that they are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and they are against other parties,” he said.

How, you ask, was this perception generated? It came to be via the US reaction to the Morsi election and subsequent ouster:

The perception began even before the Egyptians elected Morsi, Abou el-Ghar said, when Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and 2008 GOP presidential nominee, met with members of the Muslin Brotherhood in February 2012 but not representatives from competing parties. The headlines were: U.S. Warms to the Muslim Brotherhood. It was furthered when U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson criticized Egypt’s military for interfering in July when opponents deposed Morsi. That view has become more widespread since, with the Pentagon’s decision to defer delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Egypt and the Administration’s review of aid to Cairo.

And more recently:

The latest evidence of Obama’s purported proclivity towards the Brotherhood came in Thursday’s State Department briefing, which has made headlines in Egypt. In it, spokesman Jen Psaki says that the choice to detain of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarakis an “internal Egyptian legal matter,” but in the next breath calls for the release of Morsi, who is accused of many serious crimes. Egyptians took this as further evidence that America is intervening on behalf of the Brotherhood still.

Consequently the US is extremely unpopular in Egypt, despite President Obama’s Cairo speech – go figure.

Diplomacy is something which requires careful thought and should have a goal or goals. It should always serve the best interests of the nation, not a President. It should be based in reality and should be presented in such a way that it is clearly understood by all. None of those important factors seem to be present in the US diplomatic effort in Egypt. And that has led to the perception the US now labors under.

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Trackbacks/Pings

Comments

We heard this same thing previously about how the people supported democracy and peace and free love. It was all coming from the same liberal groups talking to the same liberal reporters and then Egypt vote 74% for the radical Muslim parties.

The media doesn’t have a good track record of knowing what the Egyptians really believe.

The scapegoating of Coptic Christians in Egypt appears to be backfiring finally. The fact that the military has forcefully stepped in to stop the Brotherhood’s violence against the Christians has met with the approval of most Egyptians.

Well, now that there are few Christians and churches left the Egyptians decide to be appalled at the violence. It would have been nice if there had been a little more concern back when nuns were being paraded through the streets, the cross was being replaced by Muslim symbology on schoolfronts, and Christian residences and businesses were being marked in red for destruction.

Direct reflection on the (lack of) abilities and (lack of) success of both President Obama and former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. The failures on foreign affairs should be the downfall of Hillary’s presidential prospects but, most likely, John Kerry will be noticeable more successful as Sec. of State and probably help keep Hillary on-track.

I only pray that the MSM will start to wake-up, refuse to let the U.S. sink any further, and put the heat and spotlight on the failures of this administration and the Democratic party. Sigh.

Check out Instagram #cairo #egypt you’ll find MOST of the hatred (of the non Muslim Brohood folks) is directed at OBAMA, not the American people.

PappyD61 on August 26, 2013 at 1:02 PM

It definitely is Obama and not the American people that took food and jobs out of Egypt when he almost single-handedly destroyed the tourism industry in his fiddling around with picking winners and losers.

Those empty hotel rooms, idle tour guides, and all the rest are Obama’s doing not the American people who would be there this time of year getting their pictures taken with a camel in front of the pyramids were it not for the rat-eared wonder.

Obama did and does back The Muslim Brotherhood, as does Brennan and the liar, Clapper, who should be under indictment(remember when a baseball player was indicted for lying to Congress?). The actions of Ambassador Paterson were so extreme she had to be recalled.

According to Wikipedia, there are a lot of languages which have a word that sounds like “nina”. In Arabic, it means “friend”, and in Persian, it means “nice”. So it’s certainly a plausible Muslim name, even disregarding the fact that the name most likely is derived from the Spanish word for “girl”. It’s not like being named “Christina” or “Israel”.

In fact, many Egyptians seem to be both supportive and thankful that the military did what it did to remove the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi from office:

I can’t claim expertise in the case of Egypt, but I strongly suspected that might be happening. Just like in Fallujah and Afghanistan, when the radicals get in power, the rest of the Muslims suddenly realize their situation hasn’t gotten better at all.

The Muslim fanatics are their own worst enemies. Nothings fails quite like their own success.

Obama loves him some muslim extremist anus, it’s his favorite flavor. He’s had MB personnel at the White House for Ramadan dinners, including some who have been on terror watch lists. He’s letting the mad mullahs build nukes quietly.

Is it any wonder that Egyptians see him for just what he is? Not a friend of secular non-muslim governments, not a friend of the Egyptian people or their military we’ve spent 40 years building a close relationship with.

Headlines today: “Obama warily eyes escalation of U.S. action on Syria” – he acts as if he is a mere spectator in anything that might go wrong, and the press plays along.

in Egypt the perception is that the Obama administration backs the Muslim Brotherhood:

Yeah, perception is truth. But in this case it isn’t perception, it is just truth. The Egyptians are more aware of who flows through the WhiteHouse and what their business is when it comes to Muslim visitors than the WhiteHouse does. Ignorant America, not knowing a Bedouin Ass from a Kurdish elbow with regards to Islam, staggers blindly with a “bribe it or blow it up” foreign policy based on not a shred of world knowledge and poisoned by self interested individuals who deal intimately with representatives of Islam for a myriad of financial benefits for themselves. Some major rectification is required and a vote for the same crew of suborned politicians will change nothing.

in Egypt the perception is that the Obama administration backs the Muslim Brotherhood

Among the Egyptian populace, the current approval ratings for both President Obama and for US mideast policy barely cracks the single digits. The fact that the Obama Administration is perceived as backing the Muslim Brotherhood is actually a political deathblow to them.

The Obama administration’s halfhearted, incompetent, and blundering support for the Muslim Brotherhood has had had the paradoxical effect of advancing US policy interests in the region – by discrediting the Muslim Brotherhood.

I have been following Mideast policy for a long time, and I had often wondered (during the Mubarak era) how on earth we could possibly get around the problem of the (formerly) impressive popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood. Now we can see the solution – to publicly support their rise to power, and to have them go down in flames through completely incompetent statecraft, then to quench the last embers of support by halfheartedly supporting them on their way down. Brilliance.

Kind of reminds me of Inspector Clouseau “solving” a case (or evading assassins at the Octoberfest).